1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a method for increasing the yield of a slurry bed reactor and, more particularly, to a method for increasing the yield of a slurry bed reactor by using absorbing agent to remove at least one product of a primary reaction or at least one reactant of a side reaction.
2. Related Prior Art
A slurry bed reactor is suitable for an exothermal reaction for making methanol or dimethyl ether for example because it uses solvent with high heat capacity and excellent heat transfer and involves a simple structure. About 5000 million tons of methanol were produced around the world in the year of 2009. The production of methanol is of a considerable commercial value.
Generally, if a chemical reaction is a reversible reaction, the chemical reaction will eventually reach thermodynamic equilibrium where the equilibrium conversion ratio of the chemical reaction is the highest. In the industry, because the reactants cannot be used completely, some of the reactants must be separated from the products and reused. The lower the equilibrium conversion ratio is, the more of the reactants have to be recycled, and the higher the cost. If some of the products can be removed, the chemical equilibrium is moved toward the products and the conversion ratio of the reactants is increased. For example, the chemical reaction of carbon oxide (CO) with nitrogen oxide (NO2) to produce carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen oxide (NO) is a reversible reaction. The chemical reaction is represented by a formula as follows:CO+NO2CO2+NO
The equilibrium constant Keq=[CO2]eq[NO]eq/[CO]eq[NO2]eq. If the carbon dioxide is removed after the chemical reaction, the chemical reaction will be moved to the right, thus facilitating further production of the carbon dioxide from the carbon oxide and increasing the use of the reactants.
Sometimes, in a reactor, there are several chemical reactions represented by the formulae as follows:A+B=C+D  (1)A+D=E+F  (2)wherein C is the primary product, if some of D is removed during the chemical reactions, the side products of equation (2) will be reduced and the primary product C will be increased.
Examples of chemical reactions based on the foregoing principle can be found in some documents. In Gallucci and Basile, Int. J. Hydrogen Energy, 32, 5050, 2007 for example, a fixed bed reactor is used to produce methanol from carbon dioxide and hydrogen (CO2+H2CH3OH+H2O), and a film can be used to remove the methanol or water to increase the conversion ratio. However, no document has proposed removing at least one product from a chemical reaction executed in a slurry bed reactor to increase the conversion ratio of at least one reactant.
The present disclosure is therefore intended to obviate or at least alleviate the problems encountered in prior art.